Where should I start?
Bot Framework is a comprehensive conversational AI development environment for designing conversational AI experiences. Bot Framework Composer, Azure Bot Service, Azure Health Bot, and Power Virtual Agents are built on Bot Framework.
QnA Maker is an Azure Cognitive Service that automatically extracts question-and- answer pairs from semi-structured documents, including website FAQ. QnA Maker makes it easy to create simple bots without the need to write code.
Azure Health Bot is specifically designed to build bots for the healthcare domain. Power Virtual Agents is a no-code bot-building experience, available as a software as a service (SaaS) on Microsoft Power Platform.
What is Bot Framework Composer?
Bot Framework Composer is a visual, open-source bot authoring canvas to build, test, and deploy bots directly to Azure. Start with a simple question-and-answer bot extracted from semi-structured documents or a website, or with prebuilt components that can be extended with code and logic to create sophisticated multilingual and multimodal bots for any scenario.
Bots built in Power Virtual Agents can be extended in Bot Framework Composer.
Can I use open-source software with Bot Framework?
Yes. The Bot Framework SDKs and tools are all built as open-source technologies, available through the GitHub repo. In addition, you can integrate your own components and technologies in your bot solution as needed for your scenario.
Does Bot Framework provide analytics for my bot?
Yes. As a developer solution, Bot Framework provides designs that utilize Application Insights to collect service-level and conversation-level data that can help gauge the performance and efficacy of your bot. Application Insights is available for bots built directly with the Bot Framework SDK, as well as Bot Framework Composer.
Does Bot Framework include natural language AI and speech?
Yes. Bot Framework uses Language Understanding (LUIS) for building custom machine-learning language models to extract information from conversational phrases and Azure Speech and Direct Line Speech for creating intuitive and extensible voice-based interaction with bots.
Which languages are supported by Bot Framework?
The Bot Framework SDK and Bot Framework Composer provide multilingual support for bot development for a variety of languages, with English as the default.
The Bot Framework SDK supports multiple programming languages, including C#, JS, Python, and Java.
Bot Framework Composer contains reusable assets in the form of JSON and Markdown files that can be bundled and packaged with a bot's source code, which can be checked into source control systems and deployed along with code updates such as dialogs, language understanding training data, and message templates.